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RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

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Just Remind Me How The Tories Will be Worse?

30 March, 2010 — RickB

Later, a healthcare professional working for the private healthcare company which carries out these assessments, wrote in indicating that there was a target that the inspection team were expected to meet. Under the username rightthewrong, he wrote:

“I probably am going to get fired tommorrow for coming on this forum, but I don’t care. I have been doing these “assessments” for some time now. It’ s rubbish, draconian to say the least and it is designed to get people off the sick benefit. It is designed so that 75% of the people who apply for ESA, come hell or high water, ‘fail’ it.”

Quite clearly any method to fail claimants irrespective of passing the proper criteria is wrong. You can set up an independent board of doctors to test candidates but of course is there any such thing as independence? Whoever pays the piper names the tune. Let’s look at the real world not the philosophical one. There are not enough jobs to go around. If people on jobseekers allowance, particularly those without a mortgage (because on a reasonable size mortgage) if you cannot pay you lose your house, decide that low paid minimum wage jobs cannot pay council tax (25 pounds a week for ten months at my place), rent (around £500 a month here) then going on career sick and then invalidity with the free car, well I can’t blame them. Whilst I do not blame them getting every penny out of the system that they can I can hear the roofer looking down and thinking to himself `lazy sod I’m paying my tax for him.
I would also comment that many people who would consider themselves on the left (ie voting new labour lol) would welcome these `crackdowns`. This is not simply a populist policy for the slightly tougher right. It will find resonance with many more people. If you argue that because capitalism is by definition schwed against the workers then a free for all is morally justified then fine. I’m all for it. Just be honest about it. We all know people who are fiddling the sick.

Jim, I don’t know anyone who is fiddling the sick, if people claim fraudulently then there should be the means to detect and stop that, the current system and the proposed changes are not however designed to do that, they are designed to cut entitlement across the board and to open the door further to privatising the functions of the DWP. Fraudulent claims are another issue, it is not this issue and bringing it up demonstrates how effective propaganda has been to associate sickness benefit immediately in people’s minds with people fiddling the system.

I understand perfectly well that it is intended to stop proper entitlement across the board. I clearly said that in my first sentence. You don’t know anyone not bending the sick? What a middle class world you truly live in. And truly patronising with it. No propaganda whatsoever: I just look at people I know and tell the truth about it. There seems to lie the difference.

No I don’t, I know people on it whose lives are made very difficult by the Neoliberal attacks on them (how does not knowing a fiddler make me middle class?!?!). The thing is people on benefit are not somehow automatically saints, they are a sample of the populace (though skewed, the wealthy do not have to rely on them, although they do often try to claim as much as they can get away with), so some will be crooks as the population at large has a number of shifty characters in it, however the media and govt focus on the minority who fiddle to discredit everyone in order to further an ideological agenda that is eerily reminiscent of Victorian notions of the ‘underserving poor’ and worse. Those fiddlers are being used to attack those who need the benefits, which at times includes me because of my health issues. So I’m kind of sick of the scrounger response whenever discussion crops up.

Rick, I’ve never mentioned `scroungers’ as such, in fact I’m all in favour of them as I have hinted at all through this discussion. Neoliberals again. Fine. Everybody should take what they can. The rich are. But I will remain honest to myself.